As the sun dawned over the desert horizon, a small, needle-like aircraft continued on its present course. Its fuselage measured no more than a foot across, the plane's wingspan was designed to be as large as possible to give it increased lift in order to save on fuel. The nose did not contain a pilot's cockpit but rather several telescopic cameras that tied into a central computer. Being completely automated, the Gnat, as it was called, could be controlled by technicians located safely behind the front lines. The sensors on the nose tip were extremely sensitive to motion and heat but the arid conditions of the moon's surface prevented the computer from using these particular abilities. The technician who controlled it relied upon visual sighting instead.

  Adept Achmed Faud was beginning to doze off as he stared at the display showing the Gnat's remote cameras. He had been awake for over twenty-four hours as his team struggled to get the unit's heavy equipment operational as fast as possible. While many in his group complained about the horrid conditions of the desert, Faud felt like he had come home. Born as the second child of an Azami family that had emigrated back to Terra, Faud felt a kinship to the desert; he knew that his ancestors had traversed the great sand seas of ancient Arabia as traders and warriors of old. And it was this sense of the familiar that kept him in good spirits, despite his exhaustion.

  As Faud opened his eyes once more after a heavy feeling at the back of his head, the WOB technician instantly went awake as he noticed a number of things that came across his monitor. As he used the remote-controlled joystick to switch the Gnat to manual control in order to get a closer look, he knew something was up. As the lip of a crater came into view, he noticed a partially buried delta wing of the Monarch class DropShip that had crashed the day before. It was the Amerigo, no doubt about it.

  Quickly alerting operational command, Faud radioed in the coordinates to the units that were close by. Now that they found them, they would fix them.

  Duke Rudiger Steiner was already awake when his aide brought over a bottle of tepid water for him to drink. Despite the shade that the crater wall offered, it was still quite hot and he was sweating profusely. Steiner's white trousers had been stained to a monochrome color of sand. His team of Lyran delegates had rebelled just the day before against the authority of Major Dominic Durant when the SLDF intelligence officer ordered them to move off towards the mountains. Steiner thought that it was ridiculous to try to resist the well-armed Blakists when all they had to do was negotiate. He felt that WOB held all the cards and so that meant that he had to cooperate to a certain degree. While the entire Lyran delegation remained loyal to him for he had hand-picked them prior to the beginning of the journey from New Avalon, a few others from the other delegations felt that a peaceful way was the best solution and so came over to his side as well.

  Steiner stood up and walked over to where his bodyguards where when someone shouted that they had spotted an aircraft over the southern horizon. Taking out his rangefinder binoculars, Steiner immediately began scanning the surrounding sky for any signs.

  Sure enough, he saw several helicopters in the distance, approaching rapidly. Although they had khaki streaks painted all along their fuselages, he could tell that the helicopters belonged to WOB because of the white base paint as well as the emblem of a massive, downward-pointing broadsword along their sides and rudders. Steiner's eyes opened wider as the helicopters multiplied into about a half-dozen as they came in formation. "What type are they?" He asked one of the bodyguards as he continued to observe with the binoculars.

  "Looks like Pintos and Ferrets." One of the Lyran bodyguards who also observed with his own pair of rangefinder binoculars said. The Ferret was considered to be a light helicopter suitable for scouting and reconnaissance while the much larger and well-armed Pinto was classified as an attack helicopter, capable of offensive operations as well as being able to transport infantry.

  Steiner had a momentary fright, as a boy he was scared of flying bugs. As the fleet of helicopters approached, they eerily seemed to resemble a swarm of giant flying insects. He felt that he had to give them a sign that they did not want to fight as he began to wave with both arms at the closest one.

  The pilot of the lead Ferret activated his comm. switch. "This is Spade-One, we have established visual contact with the delegates, over."

  "Stand by, Spade-One, we are nearly there." A terse voice replied over the comm. link.

  Several people began to form as a crowd while they began to cheer their apparent rescuers. As Steiner began to smile and walked over to join the others, a bodyguard tugged at his arm. "This might not be safe, sir." The guard said.

  Duke Steiner nodded glumly as he and his bodyguards began to move back towards the crater lip just in case they needed to make a run for cover. As they slowly backed away, Steiner noticed someone in the crowd let out a gasp as the woman pointed to a rise on a nearby sand dune.

  The crowds immediately stopped cheering when they saw six BattleMechs, their massive white and khaki-streaked hulks glinting in the morning sun, traverse the sand dune in front of them. A 70-ton Shootist and a 75-ton Toyama, both heavy 'Mechs, ventured out from the formation and stopped right in front of the now silent crowd, just less than a dozen meters away.

  Acolyte Rogelio Chavez opened the bay door of the Pinto helicopter as he leaned out as far as his safety harness could reach. He could see the hapless crowd below as the helicopter that he was riding in circled above. Though there were many new recruits into the unit, Chavez was not one of them. As soon as he joined the Blakist militia nearly a decade ago, he had been singled out for his impressive marksmanship skills and was invited to join the WOB Special Forces units nicknamed the Light of Mankind. In Operation Odysseus he had racked up nearly one hundred kills as a sniper against the heretical Com Guard units defending the birthplace of humanity.

  Cocking the bolt of the 7.62mm assault rifle in place, Chavez adjusted the scope he had mounted on it until he had the proper range. Unlike the other, newer infantrymen, Chavez and the other LOM veterans stood out because of the little things. LOM operators tended to shy away from the white combat headgear that the standard WOB infantrymen wore and instead preferred hockey helmets to prevent their heads from bumping in tight spaces. Some LOM operators wore no helmets at all, preferring to wear the kheffiyah, the ancient Arabic headscarf to shield them from the heat and dust of the desert. Chavez and his like also wore knee and elbow pads to protect their joints when they had to stay low on the ground and every operator was never without their trusty sunglasses. That they had their own armorer who supplied them with custom weapons only added to their mystique as the younger infantrymen looked up to them as models on how a defender of Blake should be.

  As the crowd began to grow uneasy from the lack of response that the BattleMechs in front of them gave, some began to shout as to what the purpose of their previous attack was about while others begged to be taken off and rescued from the hostile sands of the desert. It seemed that the crowd lacked unity and direction. All fell silent immediately when the Toyama's PA system activated.

  "By Blake's will," The unemotional voice from the Toyama 'Mech reverberated across the crater, "all heretics shall burn in the fires of their own making." With that, the Toyama's weapon pods began to traverse the stunned crowd.

  People began screaming, as some stayed rooted on the spot in sheer terror while others began scrambling for cover as the BattleMechs began to open fire at the crowd. Due to the fact that the large-bore weapons that the 'Mechs used were designed to destroy heavy vehicles like themselves, the massive autocannon shells and large lasers tore through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. Brandon smiled gleefully as people were virtually torn apart as his LB-X autocannon flechettes ripped into them, sending pieces of body parts and blood sprays into the air. Goth vaporized a number of fleeing hostages using his Shootist's lasers, leaving only smoking piles of melted flesh on the sandy ground.

  "Let's get out of here!" Duke Steiner shouted to his closest bodyguards as he began scrambling for cover. The only possible avenue of escape was the open desert but Steiner knew they would be easily caught by the much faster BattleMechs so he opted instead to run for the relative safety of the crashed DropShip.

   Chavez stayed stone-faced as he shot down fleeing delegates that were missed by the BattleMechs; it was all so easy that it resembled a virtual simulation that he had trained in countless times. The LOM operator wanted to keep his skills sharp so instead of going for the chest wound, he liked to shoot them in either the neck or head. Several hostages went down, blood spurting from opened jugulars or punctured skulls as Chavez kept honing his lethal abilities.

  Several hostages tried to run underneath the advancing 'Mechs, hoping that they would be missed by the gargantuan war-machines and perhaps making their way to safety. A number of lighter 'Mechs spotted them and stomped on a few, leaving piles of splattered flesh and blood onto the sands. Several Pinto and Ferret choppers fanned out to catch up to the ones that the BattleMechs missed, either raking them with lasers and machineguns or letting the LOM snipers on board do their thing, depending on their angles of attack.

  Rudiger Steiner and his small team nearly made it to the safety of the DropShip wreck but they were intercepted by a 40-ton Initiate 'Mech that stood in their way. A number of bodyguards that felt there was no other way out fired their small arms at the massive BattleMech in sheer desperation but the damage was superficial, if any.

  "We give up!" Rudiger Steiner shouted at the top of his lungs as he tried to restrain some of his suicidal men. "Don't fire! We want to talk!" He cried.

  The Initiate fired a salvo of short-ranged missiles that narrowly missed Rudiger Steiner and his men as it landed near an opened fuel line that Dominic's team had used the day before. The resulting explosion of burning fuel engulfed Duke Steiner and his remaining bodyguards and they writhed in the sand, their bodies becoming human bonfires.

  "Don't shoot, brothers," Precentor Brandon St. Jamais spoke over his 'Mech's comm. link, "let them burn!"

  Later that afternoon, a small glider made its way across the clear desert sky.

  Natasha Kerensky grimaced as she tried to adjust her position but it was no use, she was lying prone inside the glider's tiny fuselage; there was not enough room to get comfortable. Since late evening, she had managed to get an ultralight constructed and from sheer luck, get it airborne. It was a minor miracle for the Black Widow had virtually no experience in piloting aircraft; from what she heard, the flying wasn't hard- it was the landing that would be the ultimate test of her luck. She had been aloft all day, flying across the desert sky as she desperately searched for the jettisoned BattleMechs.

  As she tried to wriggle her knees because of the cramps that were starting to bother her, her left shin bumped into a water canister that bruised it. Natasha frowned; the glider needed to be as light as possible so that meant that she could only take a few items with her. Dominic had offered her a full day's supply of water but the Black Widow knew she would have been too heavy to lift off had she accepted it. Although the relentless sun also began to tan her forward facing head and shoulders, the miniature solar panels on the top of the wings needed it to help power the small, jury-rigged propeller behind the fuselage.

  Looking at the barren landscape of sand dunes below, Natasha began to despair as her tracking unit continually failed to activate. Had she jettisoned the 'Mechs even farther than what she had estimated? Did the BattleMechs actually make it on the ground in one piece or did the enemy already recover them?

  From above she could see dust devils forming in the sand as the desert winds began to build up in intensity. In just a few minutes, the entire ground beneath her swirled in a haze of khaki and brown as a great dust storm began to reshape the patterns of the sands below. It was said that sandstorms and deserts formed a vicious cycle due to the fact that clouds of swirling dust would prevent rains by choking rain clouds. The ancient Arabs called these storms the Sherji, a desolate wind of sand and dust that covered everything in its path.

  Wiping the sweat off her brow, Natasha contemplated in giving up the 'Mechs for lost just as her electronic tracking unit began to squawk. The Black Widow started to smile as she began steering the ultralight towards where the signal was beeping. Another few hours in the air and she would be with her Warhammer again, she reckoned.

  Acolyte Chavez slapped the last magazine into his assault rifle as the Pinto that he was riding in headed back towards the grounded WOB DropShips that served as their base camp. He had kept the bay door open to help with the ventilation because of the intense heat. Earlier that day they had hunted down the hostages that were located in the crater lip but after a thorough investigation, it was found that the bulk of the delegates had left the crash site and proceeded towards the mountains. Chavez frowned as he scanned the sky using his sniper scope; he wanted this mission wrapped up quickly for he knew they had other assignments down the line.

  Just as he was about to put down the scope so that he could get a swig of water, Chavez noticed a reflective glint in the sky. Quickly adjusting the magnification of his scope, he noticed that it was a light aircraft.

  As he opened the cockpit door, Chavez tapped the lead pilot of the helicopter on the shoulder. "There! Over there! Enemy aircraft!" He shouted as he pointed to the east.

  "I see it, brother. We still have some time to make a few passes; get into position." The pilot told the LOM sniper as Chavez went back to his spot and began to tighten up his safety harness.

  As the pilot increased power, the Pinto began to bear down on the glider as it sped on. As soon as it was less than a hundred yards away, the pilot began to activate the weapons on the helicopter. Although the Longbow missile system was exhausted from the previous encounter with the hostages, they still had an array of three medium lasers with which to blow the ultralight out of the sky. The gunner however, was all too eager to shoot the glider down and his first laser shot went wide.

  Natasha instantly turned her head when she saw a beam of red light pass by the side of her cockpit. Using the rear mirror that she had mounted in cases like these, Natasha made a silent curse as she saw a Pinto attack helicopter directly behind her. The Black Widow knew that her aircraft was not a fighter, the glider could not pull loops nor could it do Immelman turns because it lacked both the speed and the maneuverability. For all intents and purposes, she was a sitting duck in the air. In a split second, she realized that she had only one choice if she wanted a chance to survive, and it wasn't a very promising one.

  The Pinto pilot grimaced as the glider in front of them went into a steep dive. He quickly pushed on his control stick as the Pinto followed it downwards towards the swirling clouds of dust. The helicopter pilot realized that the glider was trying to stay low, hopefully losing them while it tried to maneuver between the vortexes of sand near the desert floor. It was a highly dangerous maneuver but there was a chance the glider pilot might pull it off.

  Chavez put the kheffiyah over his nostrils and mouth as the dust began to seep inside the opened bay doors of the Pinto. The LOM sniper did not want to use the clear Polycarbonate goggles that he regularly carried because it got in the way of the scope. As he leaned out and tried to zero in on the glider, he noticed that it was twisting and jinxing rapidly to try to shake off the pursuing chopper as it maneuvered in between columns of swirling sand just a few dozen meters from the ground. Although the dust kept interfering with his sights and was irritating the hell out of his eyes, Chavez kept at it; all he needed was one clear shot.

  Natasha struggled with the controls of the glider as the fragile wings began to buckle from the force of the dust storms buffeting her flimsy aircraft. As she kept alternating between looking in front of her and the mirror that served as her rear sight, she nearly lost control a couple of times which meant that she would have crashed.

  "My lasers are malfunctioning!" The Pinto gunner said as an alarm on his heads-up display indicated that the sand from the dust storm had interfered with the focusing lenses in the laser barrels.

  "Blake's hell!" The Pinto pilot cursed. "Sniper! It's up to you!" He called out to Chavez as he maneuvered to the proper angle so that the LOM operative could get a clear shot.

  Chavez zeroed in on the back of the glider and fired. His single shot hit the back of the glider's rear propeller and the 7.62mm APHE slug passed through the paper-thin fuselage and ruptured a fuel line. Sparks from the jury-rigged, unreliable engine instantly ignited the splattering fuel. As the scorching heat and smoke began to fill up the back of the ultralight's fuselage, Natasha screamed as the lower part of her military trousers caught fire. The Black Widow reached out for the water bottle and poured it on her legs to extinguish the fire but she lost control of the aircraft almost instantly. Within a matter of seconds, the glider's left wing broke off from the force of the Sherji and the aircraft plowed into the huge swirling column of sand, disappearing from sight.

  For a few minutes the Pinto maneuvered around the swirling sandstorm to see if the glider made it out. After what seemed like an eternity, the dust clouds began to dissipate and all that could be seen was the barren desert floor.

  "It's gone," the Pinto pilot announced, "we are returning to base."

  Chavez kept trying to scan the ground using his scope and he noticed a few pieces of the glider's wings on the ground. Looked like they got it. He fell back into the cargo hold and wearily sat down onto the metallic floor as the helicopter turned and headed back to base.

  It had been a long day and he was looking forward to a hot shower, food, rest and prayers of thanks to Blake for a job well done.